Whether you need a simple site for your business, want to start a blog or just want to try building a WordPress website, you’ll learn all the basics in these daily lessons. In three weeks—and about 30 minutes a day—you’ll build your first WordPress blog.
The first step is to sign up for a free account on WordPress. Select a blog address, username and password—note that the blog address and username must be unique within the WordPress community. So you probably can’t get dave.wordpress.com, but you might be able to get daverobertsdesign.wordpress.com.
At this point, you can also opt to sign up for the WordPress upgrade at $99 a year. This unlocks some of the advanced features, such as custom CSS, domain mapping and storage, that you’d get with a custom build. You can also sign up for these upgrades a la carte: Custom Design (including CSS) is $30 per year and Domain Mapping starts at $12 a year. (Some of the things I’ll talk about later in this series will require WordPress upgrades or private hosting.)
If you want to host your blog yourself and do a custom build, my favorite solution for hosting is Bluehost because it’s fast, reliable and easy to maintain. Bluehost offers unlimited bandwidth and space on the server: You can host multiple websites with a single hosting plan for less than $10 a month.
The thing I like best about Bluehost is the quick WordPress site creation process they have. You can create a completely custom WordPress website without ever uploading a file or creating a database—great if you’re not a tech expert.
If you expect more than 5,000 visitors a month, you’ll probably want a custom hosting solution. In that case I recommend going with Media Temple or Rackspace, both of which require a bit more technical knowledge.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a robust, user-friendly content management system that powers more than 70 million websites. More than a fifth of all new websites created this year will be powered by WordPress—and it already powers more than 14% of the top 1 million websites. You can build everything from a simple blog to a Fortune 500 company website if you know how to leverage the tools available through system.
Tomorrow: Navigating WordPress
Learn more about making a WordPress website with our great design resources. Can’t wait for the rest of the posts in this series? Download the whole guide to build a WordPress site now.
